42 Transactions. 



morning at 9 ; and those of the hygrometer and wind twice a day, 

 at 9 A.M. and 9 P.M. The instruments were inspected by Br 

 Buchan, secretary of the Scottish Meteorological Society, on 10th 

 August last, and on being compared with his standard barometer 

 and thermometer were found to retain their former accuracy. 



Barotnetc.r. — The highest reading of the barometer in 1891 

 occurred on the 14th January, when it rose to 30'781 inches ; the 

 lowest was recorded on the 11th November, when the reading was 

 28'380 inches, giving an annual range of 2-401 inches. The mean 

 pressure for the year (reduced to 32 deg. and sea level) was 29-892 

 inches, which is about the average. The highest monthly mean 

 was in February, with a record of 30-380 inches. There were only 

 three days in that month in which the barometer fell below 30 

 inches; the lowest being 29893 inches, and, as might have been 

 expected, the weather was exceptionally fine and settled for the 

 season, with a rainfall of less than a quarter of an inch, and more 

 than the average amount of sunshine, although accompanied at 

 times by a good deal of haze or fog. The lowest barometrical 

 monthly mean was 29-651 inches in October, and the next lowest, 

 29-690 inches in August ; and it is worthy of note that th3se were 

 the months in which the heaviest rainfalls occurred, October shew- 

 ing 8-37 inches and August 7-17 inches. It is seldom that the 

 barometer falls below 29 inches, but this happened in each of the four 

 last months of 1891 — once in September, once in October, once in 

 November, and twice in December — and not in any of the previous 

 months. The depression of the 11th November, 28 380 inches, 

 vi-as not only the lowest of the year, but the lowest recorded at 

 this station since the great storm of 8th December, 1886, when 

 the barometer fell to 2 7 "61 inches. And from a paragraph in Nature 

 by Mr G. J. Symons, of the English Meteorological Society, I see 

 that in London it has been exceeded only five times in the past 34 

 years, to which his observations extend. The depression of tlie 

 13th October, 28-397 inches, "was nearly as low, and both of them 

 were accompanied by exceptionally stormy and unsettled weather. 

 This was the character indeed of the whole of the first three weeks 

 of the latter month, there having been only one day between the 

 1st and the 2 2d on which rain did not fall. 



Temperature. — The highest temperature of the year occurred 

 on the 20th June, when the thermometer (in shade 4 feet above 

 grass) registered 83-4 deg. It is worthy of being observed how 



